[firebrand]

A friend of mine who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, a flyover zone for the airports that serve NYC, told me a few years ago that she had seen huge clouds of parrots flying in the sky one day. After she pinched herself to make sure she hadn't somehow awoken in a Garcia Marquez novel, she came to the conclusion that they must have escaped while being imported. We never saw anything about it on the news. I now wonder about West Nile, although we'll never know. It did start in Queens, I believe, and the timing is right.

[firebrand]

bio-parrot ping

[hellinahandcart]

I have seen parrot nests on telephone poles all over Brooklyn! Someone told me they were parrots who'd escaped people's homes, met one another, and set up housekeeping :D. It seemed like an awful lot of ramdomly-escaped parrots to me, considering the number of nests (your explanation makes a lot more sense). We've had mild winters for the past three years, too, so that explains how so many survived.

But all it would take, really, is ONE sick parrot in a smuggled load. The Spanish flu epidemic started when one sick woman stepped off a boat here.